HEART OF BRASS cover reveal
Here it is…
On the publisher’s website it has an official release date less than a week away!
If you’re in Canberra and you want your copy signed, email me at fellissimo@hotmail.com and I’ll see what I can do.
I’ll also be at certain conferences this year, including:
Brimbank Writers and Readers Festival
1-11 September (I’ll be there on Saturday 10th only), Melbourne
Including a 2-hour panel on Interactive Fiction, and a get-together for IF lovers at the cafe around the corner (at 11am). Plus a possible spontaneous game.
September 30-October 3, Canberra
Including a workshop on how to write profitable IF, plus a panel or two.
Conflux always includes one-on-one pitching opportunities, which happens to be how “Heart of Brass” found its home at Odyssey Books Australia.
8-9 October, Sydney
Including a panel or two, probably (to be advised).
Goulburn Waterworks Steampunk and Victoriana Fair
Saturday 15 October, Goulburn
Including hanging out with several other authors (including Tara Moss), free horse and carriage rides, dancing, makers, and other marvels of the steampunk world!
Steampunk Interactive Fiction
My steampunk universe is wandering free in several forms (with at least one more time, place and engine still to come) so I need to clean house and make things clearer.
I’m adjusting the category tag I use to coordinate things to “All Steampunk Fiction” and having two facebook pages – one for interactive fiction, and one for physical books.
Hope this helps…..
HEART OF BRASS novel to be published May 2016
Party Post-Mortem
At a typical book launch, this is what happens:
Someone does an intro; the author talks a bit and reads a bit; people buy the book; the author signs it; people mingle and eventually depart. There’s food and usually wine. A lot of launches happen at conferences, where new fans are everywhere… but mostly those potential fans ignore the launch and walk on past.
I hate book launches.
At a typical book launch, this is what happens (redux):
A desperate author silently screams for the fame and fortune that will never come. They dance like a chained monkey at the whim of social expectations and a necessary gamble.
An apathetic audience squirms inside, watching the slow death of dreams and wondering if the brie is still fit for human consumption (and if so, then for how much longer?) The cut-price chardonnay slowly warms to room temperature as the red wine and last hopes of artistic survival attempt to breathe.
Everyone (who knows what’s good for ’em) buys a book and the author signs them. There is an awkward pause, and then everyone goes home.
The above is not at all true of course; but that’s the experience as seen through a social anxiety disorder (combined with chronic illness and the associated financial problems laid on top of the pre-existing artist poverty). So, although book launches are legitimately fun, I just can’t handle them. There are only three possible social occasions more awful: a doomed wedding; a musical performance by someone I know (regardless of their talent level); a poetry reading.
One of the peculiarities of my anxiety disorder is that I’d rather BE the desperate author than watch them. I feel more in control; I am certain that whatever I feel is entirely delusion-free (even if I thought something quite different five minutes earlier); and adrenaline works with me instead of fighting against me.
In any case, with “Attack of the Clockwork Army” I decided to do things my way. So I had an epic book launch party that ran from 10 in the morning until 9 at night (that’s eleven hours) so people could drop in and drop out whenever. I hosted it at my own home, and welcomed both small children and strangers (an interesting combination). There was a room just for duplo, and a designated reading room.
In this picture there are phones (including one toy phone), ipads, and a kindle. It’s not even the reading room, and that was fine by me! (I did spent some time in the reading room with two people showing them the mechanics of ChoiceScript. They and I enjoyed it thoroughly.)
I prepared various foods in advance, and cooked several low-maintenance things during the party – a chocolate fountain, sausage rolls, a terducken roast (duck and turkey and chicken), pre-mixed cookies.
And, to my amazement, people actually came. Here’s some interesting (to me) stats on the attendees:
People related to me (not counting people that live here): 10
People from Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild (and their families): 11
Assorted friends and their families from various schools (including Louisette’s school): 9
Miscellaneous: 12 (including an ex, two complete strangers, one of Louisette and TJ’s babysitters, an ex-workmate, a role-player, a ballroom dancer, and someone I met at a party one time).
Total number of people in the house throughout the day: 46.3. And a cat. There was a moment after lunch when there was no-one there for about twenty minutes, and then the arvo crowd flowed in. Other than that, it always felt like a lot of people – but never so many that it was unpleasantly crowded (although in the morning there were 8 kids at once, which is a LOT – having a bucket of chalk outside was absolutely perfect.)
-People who’d never been to my house before (from the above lists): 16 (one of whom I hadn’t seen for over ten years)
-In costume: 8
-Kids: Twelve; all but one aged 5 or less.
I didn’t do any official reading of the book at all (but encouraged people to read the book for themselves – it’s very easy to find on any app store; you just search for “Attack of the Clockwork Army” and it comes up with gratifying readiness).
But. My writerly friend (pictured here showing off his “Cat in the Hat” tattoo while playing with play-dough) decided to do a live reading of the romance scene. He was reading it for the first time, and he happened to have chosen the character of a lesbian woman.
That was an unforgettable experience.
Not long after this photo was taken, Superman and Supergirl were having adventures outside when Superman decided it was That Kind Of Party and promptly got naked, immediately followed by Supergirl. Superman’s mum and I nearly died laughing.
As evening closed in, new clothes were applied and the party calmed down. TJ decided it was the perfect time to perform the famous “why-are-you-people-still-here-the-party’s-over” manoeuvre. He fetched his sister’s toy vacuum cleaner and got to work.
He and Louisette had a marvellous day; I discovered the sheer culinary glory of double brie dipped in a chocolate fountain (DO try this at home, if you possible can); people discussed interactive fiction, famously awful parties I’ve hosted in the past (the one with the fake guests was only the second-worst); steampunk, gaming, when plates were invented, and data collection laws; my historical food expert friend discovered terducken (and white chocolate raspberry sorbet); a few people left reviews of the book in various places; and I had fun.
Pretty sure that means it was a success.
Every book launch should have a chocolate fountain, a lesbian man with a Dr Seuss tattoo, and a pair of buck-naked superheroes.
“Worst one I’ve played”: Reviewing the Reviewers
Or you can play directly through the publisher’s web site, here. That’s the simplest if you’re not tech savvy (although you’ll need a credit/debit card there).
On most sites, it LOOKS like the game is free, and has in-app purchases. This is just a backwards way of saying, “You can read the first bit before you pay for the rest.” It’s a one-off $5 payment.
I’ve started up a facebook page just for this specific gamebook (discussion, reviews and steampunk/Victorian-era fun), at https://www.facebook.com/attackoftheclockworkarmy/
The marching of metal feet
It’s been a long journey to publication (although laughably short compared to, say, STORMHUNTER) but ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY will be released very soon.
I am, naturally, delirious with excitement.
This is it! The steampunk Australia story I’ve been working on since before Louisette existed.
[The novel HEART OF BRASS is chronologically first in-world, but although I promise it will be available someday it’s still at least a year away from release. You can play with or without spoilers depending on what name you choose – the last name “Muchamore” means you are playing a character from the print book.]
The pictures above are strangely relevant. There is a particularly steampunk (and literally magical) hot air balloon in all three of the steampunk Australia stories I’ve written so far (the third is AFTER THE FLAG FELL). I used “research” as an excuse to go in a hot air balloon ride with my partner Chris years ago, and he loved it so much we later gave his parents a voucher for the balloon flight pictured above.
With the exception of a fanfic short story I wrote for friends some time ago, ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY is the first interactive story I’ve ever written. I set out to use the coding system of ChoiceScript (more on that system later!) to represent the emotional journey of a character in a novel.
A lot of interactive fiction features a protagonist who begins as a blank slate. This implies either a lack of agency or an inevitable “Mary Sue/Marty Stu” (boringly perfect, superpowered main character) but in fact the opposite is true.
I think of the reader as a co-writer. Would the protagonist be better played as a male or a female? What romantic relationship is the most interesting? Is the protagonist especially brave, skilled, clever, or kind – because it’s impossible to be all of the above at the same time? Is their family more important, or their patriotism?
Probably my favourite aspect of CLOCKWORK ARMY – other than the story and characters, which of course I’m in love with – is the fact that the protagonist has to choose a “fatal flaw” that has an effect on their abilities, experiences, and relationships. It is possible to overcome any of the fatal flaws, but it’s not easy to figure out how (each fatal flaw can be overcome in a completely different way). As far as I can tell with my noob knowledge, I’m the first person to do this in interactive fiction.
Unlike old-style Choose Your Own Adventure books, Choice of Games (the publisher, and the creators of the ChoiceScript program that I use) uses what they call “delayed branching”. Instead of numerous wildly different stories (most ending in startling death), the protagonist WILL make their way towards the same climax every time… but they will have a variety of different experiences there depending on their choices, personality, and skills (most of which are expressed through statistics, which you can click a button to check on, especially if you suspect a choice requires a particular ability).
So in the first chapter or two, you mostly get “free” abilities. As the game progresses, your choices are much more likely to involve success or failure depending on whether you’ve built up the right skill set to succeed in one way or another (eg if your swordfighting is rubbish but your chess-playing is masterful, then you really should choose the chess option to challenge your baddie). I like to have trickier choices at the end, where two abilities interact to decide whether your decision ends well or… not.
It’s possible to die in CLOCKWORK ARMY (in fact there are six different ways, I think) but it’s really quite difficult. So if you died, congratulations?
I find as a reader that I can ignore the statistics if I want, and simply make choices depending on my mood. I often play as a “nice” person, and the best interactive fiction I’ve read goes ahead and gives me a “nice” ending (say, befriending your enemies instead of killing them all).
A lot of interactive fiction is more about giving an experience (such as the experience of being mentally ill or transgender) rather than telling an action-packed adventure story. Not mine though – at least not yet. I just write adventures, like I always have.
If you like the idea of a steampunk romp set in Australia, you’ll love ATTACK OF THE CLOCKWORK ARMY.
Also, you can read it on your phone. You can even fight against the Australian independence movement if you like – just don’t tell the author. She might sic a pack of iron-fanged dingoes on you.
Felicity Banks 